President Trump encouraged a thunderstorm of terrorists to storm the Capitol building on January 6th in a speech whereby he made baseless and fraudulent election claims. With Confederate and M.A.G.A flags, the majority-white crowd brandished their weapons and vandalized government property. Amidst the unfurling chaos, activists and Americans emphasized law enforcement’s lax treatment--a stark juxtaposition from this summer’s Black Lives Matter protests--and what it reveals about our country.
A surface-level explanation is the Capitol police’s lack of preparedness. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reflected in a statement, “Yesterday represented a massive failure of institutions, protocols, and planning that are supposed to protect the first branch of our federal government.”
While McConnell discussed the situation accurately and appropriately, he failed to address the deep-rooted systemic issues our nation has faced for far longer. Richard Barnett, a white man famously photographed in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, boasted that he’d stolen an envelope from Pelosi’s desk. If a Black man had committed the same crime, he would’ve received unequal--worse treatment than Barnett, who was arrested two days later amongst 8 others on January 8th, 2020 (Friday). While Trump supporters unlawfully invaded the Capitol, they took selfies with law enforcement and suffered minimal repercussions. But when protestors peacefully marched for racial justice--a basic human right--they were tear-gassed and shot with rubber bullets. An ironic dichotomy.
In a poll conducted by HuffPost and PBS NewsHour, it shows that more than 25% of Trump supporters represent people like them. These attitudes of self-righteousness are stoked by Trump’s subtle encouragement.
In contrast to McConnell’s statement, Donald Trump’s response to the domestic terrorist attack began with a sympathetic, “I know your pain. I know your hurt. But you have to go home now.” He went on to call his violent supporters “very special”. However, in a New Hampshire speech, Trump referred to BLM supporters as, “not protesters...Those are anarchists, they’re agitators, they’re rioters, [and] they’re looters.”
“No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, they wouldn’t have been treated very, very differently than the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol,” declared President-elect Joseph Biden in a national address.
The takeaway: white terrorists are able to attack the Capitol and brandish their bigotry. However, Black people protest injustice in a racist system and are deemed “anarchists.” It’s clearer now than ever before that white privilege oozes from the corridors of American democracy--and those who benefit and uphold it--actively embrace it.
